Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Surface Studio

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 576 posts

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#121

Post by rpeden »

Osiris wrote: post #64

The two things that Macbooks have had over Windows laptops, in my opinion, is high resolution screens and a fantastic trackpad. Windows laptops, even on the high end, still tend to screens no better than 1080p and crappy touchpads. My wife hates the touchpad so much she always uses a mouse and has the trackpad disabled. I just got an HP Elite x2, which is basically a Surface Pro and I really like the pen and touch in…

There are a lot of subpar Windows laptops out there, but there are at least some good ones to choose from.

Last year around Christmas, I picked up an Asus Zenbook for under $700CDN on sale. 3200x1800 touch screen, 8GB RAM, and a trackpad that works as well (to me, at least) as the one on my MacBook Air.

I was a little concerned that the Skylake Core m3 would be underpowered, but it hasn't felt slow during any of the dev tasks I've thrown at it. Benchmarks aren't always accurate, I know, but the ones I have run on both the Zenbook and my MBA show them to be about equal. It's not as fast as my 8 core, 32GB RAM desktop machine, but I don't expect it to be.

The HP Elite looks pretty neat. I'll have to try one next time I'm at the MS Store if they have one on display.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#123

Post by komali2 »

smrtinsert wrote: post #55
dorianm wrote: post #46

They can do all the marketing they want, I just feel like this is gonna be the buggiest thing I ever used if I tried it.

How's that? I tried an surface pro a while ago and the touch screen worked fine. They had some issues to work around scaling, but iirc those are mostly sorted out. Frankly it looks amazing.

I'm an avid surface user, which doesn't make sense because 90% of my tweet history is me yelling at Microsoft that a windows update is preventing me from giving a presentation, again.

So, as much as I love the platform, the issues for me are

1. Windows 10 updates are not sane. They do not schedule properly, and do not try to tell me otherwise because I have invested probably 40 hours total at this point trying to sanely schedule them. If you disable them, your build of Windows will go out of date and your machine will reset randomly until you turn them back on. Also, on a surface pro, updates take ~30 minutes to 6 hours. I joke not. So result: I'll roll into work at 8, have a presentation at 9, pop open the machine, and see "windows is configuring your update.... 39%" and know that I won't be working on that machine until after lunch. Maybe.

2. Random, impossible to track, unrelated bugs. Plugging in a second monitor causes all sorts of weirdness. It gets stuck in tablet mode. It'll refuse to go into tablet mode. The task bar will refuse to go away in fullscreen mode for some apps until a reset. It'll forget my office app credentials. Onenote will crash a hundred times. It'll soft-eject the microSD card randomly, but usually in the middle of a file transfer. Keyboard won't be recognized. Pen tip will fall out and they'll charge you 12 bucks for a replacement pack with 3 inside, 2 of which you'll instantly use.

I love the surface because it perfectly fits my needs, but damn do I also hate it.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#124

Post by rtkwe »

smrtinsert wrote: post #55
dorianm wrote: post #46

They can do all the marketing they want, I just feel like this is gonna be the buggiest thing I ever used if I tried it.

How's that? I tried an surface pro a while ago and the touch screen worked fine. They had some issues to work around scaling, but iirc those are mostly sorted out. Frankly it looks amazing.

Scaling for huge mainstream things are great. My biggest pains come from various Eclipse family IDEs and IDEs in general that do not scale icons at all so they're all incredibly tiny. That's not in Microsoft's hands though so I can't really blame them for it. It looks like Eclipse proper might finally have a fix so sometime in the next year or so maybe it'll come down to the various ones based on Eclipse.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#125

Post by lucisferre »

jordache wrote: post #120
digi_owl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this seems to aim straight at the complaints that Apple has been ignoring the creative segment of their market.

Apple these days are designed for optimal usage of iTunes and Safari. It is no longer the platform of choice for creative content creation.

Surprisingly, two of the worst pieces of software that come with OSX. I would love it if they were really optimizing anything about iTunes.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#126

Post by reitanqild »

Osiris wrote: post #83
mhomde wrote: post #71

I can't but feel sad that Microsoft somehow is dropping the ball on mobile despite them having been, briefly, in a prime position to succeed. They've executed well with their "One platform"-strategy. UWP is great and with the new composition API their finally moving into being able to compete in the modern software arena. Meanwhile on the hardware side Panos is basically doing what Apple should have been doing if the…

They were in mobile from the beginning with Windows CE. Balmer thought the iPhone was a joke and they so they didn't try to adapt. By the time they did, Android and iOS had hundreds of thousands of apps. So they are in a catch-22, they can't gain marketshare because they don't have enough apps and no one will write apps for it because they don't have any marketshare. I think their strategy so far is good. Get Windows…

The saddest part is maybe how close they where:

I so wanted it but waited and waited for a waterproof Nokia and then ended with a Sony Z series and later a Samsung something waterproof flagship.

Others waited for instasnapsomething but I almost can't care less I think as long as the platdorm has a couple of good alternatives for notes and calendar + Whatsapp and Telegram.

Now I almost feel bad for not supporting them. Who would have thunk for someone who used to despise all their products until some 4 years ago :-/ (since early 2000s).

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#127

Post by uniclaude »

As with other recent Microsoft devices, I feel like:

- This computer looks very good

- The specs look more than decent (skylake, 32gb ram...)

...but

- It's going to be poorly distributed (at least where I live, in Asia). I'm not even expecting a synchronized worldwide release.

- I'll have a hard time working in an Unix-friendly environment (the only reason why I bought macs so far)

- I wouldn't be surprised if it's insanely overpriced in Asia (like the Surface Book is)

So I'm pretty sure I'll unfortunately have to pass, and so will most people I work with.

The Microsoft buying experience is horrendous, and that's too bad now that their OS sounds OK, and their hardware is probably the best PC hardware you can get.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#128

Post by blackoil »

jhwhite wrote: post #21
laurent123456 wrote: post #11

With its Subsystem for Linux aimed at developers and now this desktop PC for designers, it seems Microsoft is quickly catching up with Apple. Now if they could release a good alternative to the MacBook Pro that would be great.

MS is definitely taking the steps in the hardware department that Apple has been lagging behind on. But I still feel Windows itself is not a productive OS. I'm big on keyboard shortcuts but MS is very much mouse based. Being required to use my pinky to try and hit CTRL instead of my thumb to hit COMMAND to do simple things like copy and paste is HUGE to me. I didn't use a Windows machine for 3 years and when I did ne…

I am using company provide rMBP for 2 years and I like to linux like terminal/bash, but otherwise I can't find any reason it is so revered.

Multi monitor support sucks so bad, I have to wiggle mouse few seconds at bottom of monitor before it is taken as active, but boy popup of active window still opens on 2nd monitor.

I minimize Firefox it goes down in Dock, now when I press Cmd+Tab, Firefox is in the applications list but the window doesn't comes back. I have to click on it with mouse to open it.

And maximize screen button now defaults to new full screen Desktop, which looks good if you use trackpad and swipe around, but with keyboard it adds no value, just distracts a lot, and apps like Chrome/Finder if I click option+maximize, they believe I want some sort of horizontal/vertical expansion.

/rant

Edit: Even greater WTF is dialog boxes, I use tab to focus on a button, press enter and viola the default action is taken, ignoring the keyboard focus, so if I don't want to save file, I have to use trackpad :|

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#129

Post by jordache »

lucisferre wrote: post #125
jordache wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple these days are designed for optimal usage of iTunes and Safari. It is no longer the platform of choice for creative content creation.

Surprisingly, two of the worst pieces of software that come with OSX. I would love it if they were really optimizing anything about iTunes.

if they can optimize iTunes it would represent as a momentous shift in general computing.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#130

Post by ivan_gammel »

Osiris wrote: post #83
mhomde wrote: post #71

I can't but feel sad that Microsoft somehow is dropping the ball on mobile despite them having been, briefly, in a prime position to succeed. They've executed well with their "One platform"-strategy. UWP is great and with the new composition API their finally moving into being able to compete in the modern software arena. Meanwhile on the hardware side Panos is basically doing what Apple should have been doing if the…

They were in mobile from the beginning with Windows CE. Balmer thought the iPhone was a joke and they so they didn't try to adapt. By the time they did, Android and iOS had hundreds of thousands of apps. So they are in a catch-22, they can't gain marketshare because they don't have enough apps and no one will write apps for it because they don't have any marketshare. I think their strategy so far is good. Get Windows…

Developers won't optimize UX of their apps for phones, unless they'll see valuable target audience there. And this isn't going to happen without selection of new devices of market (their current best one is so inferior to iPhone 7, that the only excuse to buy it is the price). So what we'll get is a lot of ugly apps that barely work on small screens.
Post reply on HN